An expert said that Ukraine will need 300,000–400,000 migrants every year to support the economy

Ukraine will need 300,000–400,000 labor migrants every year to support its economy, despite having nearly 2 million unemployed people.

This was said by Oleh Pendzin, a member of the Economic Discussion Club, on Ukrainian television.

“We have quite significant structural unemployment. Formally, we have almost 2 million unemployed according to the International Labour Organization’s methodology. But there are certain occupations that are in extremely short supply,” he noted.

According to him, the greatest shortages are in skilled trades and engineering/design professions.

There is also an acute shortage of heavy-truck drivers.

“Ukraine—and demographers have been saying this for a long time—will be forced to address the issue of labor migrants. In fact, there are already examples where certain enterprises in Zakarpattia invited workers from Bangladesh because they couldn’t find employees in the area where they started setting up a woodworking plant. Demographers, by the way, say Ukraine needs to bring in roughly 300,000–400,000 labor migrants annually. This is a very big challenge for Ukraine’s labor market right now. And to rebuild Ukraine, if the active phase of hostilities stops, about an additional 4 million workers will be needed,” Pendzin said.

He also recalled that after the war began, 6.8 million people left Ukraine as refugees.

It was also reported that in the autumn, Ukrainian companies began bringing labor migrants into the country from Indiaand Bangladesh.